“I know who she is, Mistress,” he said. She draped the violet-scorched bandages upon his chest and arms. She did not chide him nor accuse him of babbling this time. But she did stiffen a moment, more solemn even than usual. What was it? Fear? He thought so. But that was not her way.

It did not stop her from burning him further with her secret bandages. She started in again, dressing his upper body first, followed by his legs, then lastly his feet and his head. He tensed as another heated panel draped onto his cool, bare skin.

“Her name is Lyf.” 

“Is it now?” Her eyes squinted to her task. That also was new. “And what is that to me?”

“Must you always be so cold?” He started to rise, but she pressed him back with a firm hand. 

Moments passed and he said nothing. Then, at last, “Did you not tell me to ask her name?” 

“Of course, I did.” She did not so much as smile. “And now you have it.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” There was a pit in his stomach. This meant something more to her than she was letting on. He could feel it. “If there is some mystic or weirding spirit set upon our home, won’t you bye the least bit concerned?”

At this her hands stopped in their place. An audible intake of her breath met the room with a simultaneous flash from the fire, followed by a stunning darkness. Where before the hearth cast light, now it cast only crimson shadows. A pounding rhythm also intruded, like a beating heart deep within the ground, beating against Earth’s chest and arms, as well as ears. At the same time, his surrogate rippled and swelled, her form doubling in size. All these things diminished themselves in contrast with the icy explosion of power that were her eyes. Lightnings. Supernovas. Harsh and terrifying eternities of glory.

“Child of Anirea, who shall never be my own, a mystic and a weirding and something far more severe came upon your home long ago, and your life has ever depended upon it. Your neighbors know it, and they fear, though in their cowardly greed they have never questioned the benefits bestowed by my arts on this sad little town.

“Hear me truly and mark it well. This sad little town is but a moment in time. But I have heard greater words on the wind. It was only a confused pestering against the stubborn mind of a childish girl that night your sisters found me, crippled with self-will. As I held you in my arms through early and desperate years, I could barely make out their tellings. But as you grew, as fate and resolve took the place of my own arrogance, I learned to listen. I heard to see. I remembered what in my folly I too readily ignored and forgot.

“The time is coming, and has now come, when the fortunes of mortal men shall change. More ancient and far darker beasts than mystics walk the bowels beneath the world. They are servants of death, shadows of Reanai the Anarch, the Discontented God, so long oppressed within his watery halls beneath the worlds of men. 

“Ever-Deceiver, he is not satisfied to merely twist our hearts with greed and mistrial until decay takes us and we are his. No more. Now, by darker art than I have ever heard studied, an ultimate plague is unleashed. He has more than stirred against the mighty chains which times ago were forged for him by the Forgotten. He has broken them! He has bored a fracture for his release. 

“I speak of incarnation. The taking on of flesh. A wound to spell the end of living men. 

“I do not know the place, nor do I know how soon we shall feel his reach. But I do know this: it is already on the breeze. You can smell it if you try. You will not need to try for long.” 

Her hand still pressed him back. Pressed close. As her words faded with the darkness and the light of the fire began to return, he could feel her warm touch moving up and down with his breath. 

“What I have done, even all that I did for you, I first did for myself. That was yet my folly. That was still the child who thought herself wise. But whether by means of the long Forgotten, or by impossible chance and irrational odds, my vanity has not ended without meaning. 

“You. You who cannot replace the infant daughter I lost, you have a gift which is given without wise thought, yet not without a grander scheme. Far grander than my own.”

She released him. Turned to the fire and her boiling kettle. With tongs she took another bandage from the frothing, purple stew. Came to him. Draped it upon his face, covering his eyes, scalding his mind. The pain. The blindness that was more than darkness.

Her words were honey smooth as a far off bird song behind the rolling agony. 

“You. My son. You were what I had no choice but do. Grudge me not if I cannot bear to think on the horrors of what I long before failed to see done”

Earth opened his eyes to the gray light of early day. There was no movement in the house. It was an hour or more too early yet. But the ceiling of the little house in Elusa was cold comfort to his restlessness. 

Here, he was born. Here, his mother died. Here, his sisters lived. Here, the mystic who suckled him worked her unsavory wonders. 

Was it love? Or necessity? Mere self-hunger? Passionate need?

What about for himself?

He attended to his chores in silence, not wanting to wake the others. But why? For their sake, or so that he might be alone with his own heart? 

Neither that day, nor the rest of the winter did Lyf appear. Many times he stood in the freezing air. Even the sleet on two occasions. The leafless branches rattled. The quieter snows covered his hair. 

Her foggy prison relented not. 

An ill portent. A more profound pain. 

Did he love her? Or was this merely another hunger to please himself while the end of the world whistled on the winter winds?

To be continued…

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